HoverCam T5 Office Scanner Camera Review

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat is a HoverCam T5? It is one of those things that fits nicely in its own category. It is a camera/scanner but with a twist. It takes high resolutions pictures of documents and then applies OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or converts the image to PDF or JPG.

What sets the HoverCam T5 apart from an ordinary camera or scanner is the fact that it can also record audio and video. As you can see from the pictures it has a unique design that makes it look more like an overhead projector than a scanner or camera.

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[li]HoverCam Flex includes:[/li]

Audio and Video Recording

Screen Recording

Annotation

Picture-in-Picture

Interactive Whiteboard Integration

Image Rotation

Auto White Balance, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Freeze Frame

Zoom and Scroll

MSI

Archive Manager

OCR

Drag-and-Drop Images or Videos

Auto-Straightening

Time-Lapse Photography

Video Conferencing
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When I first opened the box and took the HoverCam T5 out I immediately felt like I had something that wasn’t cheap in my hands. The HoverCam T5 has a heft to it, which prevents it from being tippy. [pullquote align=”right”]The HoverCam T5 has a heft to it, which prevents it from being tippy.[/pullquote] The HoverCam T5 also has an array of LED Lights that will last for the lifetime of the scanner (technology usually becomes obsolete pretty fast, and small LED bulb life-span are usually measured in a decades so it is safe to say this will be a relic before the bulbs need to be replaced).

The unique design of the HoverCam T5 allows it to be on your desk all the time without taking up a ton of real estate. Another nice feature is it connects to your computer and gets its power through the USB cable (supplied with the unit). Which makes the HoverCam very easy to setup and break down. It comes with a nice little travel pouch that you can sock it away in as well.

The HoverCam T5 has a 5 Megapixel HD sensor which lets it scan natively at 300 dpi (1200 dpi enhanced). The HoverCam comes with an “Anchoring Bumper” (think carpenter’s square only smaller) to help you scan your documents (so they are straight). HoverCam T5 will scan up to 11″ x 14″ which makes it great for doing larger format scans that your traditional scanner or multi-function printer will not accommodate.

The software that comes with the HoverCam (called the HoverCam Flex Suite) is brain dead easy to use. [pullquote align=”right”]The HoverCam T5 Flex Software is brain dead easy to use.[/pullquote] It will allow you to use OCR to convert your image to text, save a jpg or convert to PDF with the touch of a button.

You don’t even have to worry about your HoverCam T5 walking away, it has a Kensington Lock slot so you can attach a small wire cable to it and lock it down to your desk like you would a laptop.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o you’ve heard all the “good” stuff. What about the bad? The only really bad thing I’ve encountered with the whole concept is that it is a one shot solution. You don’t have a feeder like you would say if you used a Multi-Function Printer, which means more work if you have a lot of documents to scan. That said, you would likely be using your Multi-Function Printer for that sort of thing (the right tool for the right job)… So is it really a big deal? Probably not. If you need a scanner or a camera that you can take single quick shots of things with that is always there and drop dead easy to use then the HoverCam T5 is the device for you. It would be pretty useful for larger sized books with say 20 or so pages… but anything with a larger page count is going to be tedious.

I really like the HoverCam T5 and I enjoy using it. I rate it with 4 out of 5 stars. It works with most flavors of windows (even 64-bit Windows 8, which is what I tested it with).